How Ancient Food Traditions Shape California Cuisine Today

This is a very special episode of Unpacked by Afar. Because this week we hosted Unpacked Live, a—you guessed it—live version of the podcast in partnership with Visit California in Boston, Massachusetts.

In 2022, Visit California launched Visit Native California, and the goal with the Boston live event was to celebrate California’s diverse Native communities. Unpacked host Aislyn Greene was joined onstage by Christina Lonewolf Martinez, a Monterey-based private chef and founder of Chieftess Monterey Bay, who is reintroducing Indigenous ingredients and practices to California’s central coast.

On stage, Christina shared her early life and how working with local Central Coast tribes like the Esselen people, she is reviving and celebrating Indigenous ingredients like acorn flour and seaweed—and using her fine-dining training to bring them to life in brilliant new ways.

In this episode, we go deeper. Christina shares more of her family’s background, the Central Coast’s Indigenous foodways and living traditions, and where she loves to eat on a rare day off.

Transcript

Christina: In Monterey, we see acorns at some point during, during the year, like all over the floor. Now people who have dined at the Chieftess table look at it a different way because they’re like, wow, that is actually a food source, not only for animals, but it was a huge staple for the natives. And it’s now coming back again.

Aislyn: I’m Aislyn Greene, and this is a very special episode of Unpacked by Afar. Because this week we hosted Unpacked Live, a, you guessed it, live version of the podcast in partnership with Visit California.

We were there to celebrate California’s diverse Native American communities. And that voice you just heard belongs to Christina Lonewolf Martinez, one of our panelists. Christina is a private chef based in Monterey, who runs a company called Chieftess Monterey Bay that offers pop-up dinners and other events highlighting ingredients that are indigenous to this part of California’s coast from salmon and seaweed to acorn flour.

Christina joined me on stage in Boston to share her early food roots, what she learned from her Mexican grandmother, and how she came to understand and more deeply connect with her native roots.

And in this episode we go deeper into her early life, her efforts to re‑Americanize American food as Indigenous, and what it’s really like to forage for and make your own acorn flour.

Christina, welcome to Unpacked. It’s so lovely to see you again.

Christina: Thank you.

Aislyn: Would you mind by just introducing yourself, saying who you are, what you do, and where you live?

Christina: Yes. So my name is Christina Lonewolf Martinez. I live in Monterey County, specifically Salinas Valley, born and raised here and I am an Indigenous private chef to the area.

Aislyn: Amazing.

Christina: I worked as a line cook all up and down the Monterey coast. Um, I ended up creating a family, taking a little bit of a pause and then, you know, kind of deciding as a mother do I, do I try to jump back into being a chef again? Do I do what I love to do and take my son onto this adventure as well, and, you know, just show him that anything’s possible? Um, so I said yeah, and we are now figuring out how to do events, do private dinners, ceremonial dinners, and still be primary parent at the same time.

Aislyn: I love that. Would you say that he’s, uh, an adventurous eater?

Christina: His dad and I started him off really strong on it. So my son’s father is also a chef,

Aislyn: Oh, amazing, lucky kid.

Christina: We had talked about it when I was pregnant and like, what is he gonna be picky because we’re both so adventurous with food? Is he gonna go, you know, complete opposite. But, um, Mateo actually eats really well and he’s, um, really interested in trying new things. He’s had his first raw oyster. He’s had shrimp, squid, ceviche, I do venison meatballs for him with fried quail eggs sometimes too. And he absolutely loves it. So I think the more normal he sees us eating it, he’s like, okay, this is something we, we predominantly eat. This is our diet. And um, he’s been taking to it really well, you know, so there’s been a few times where it’s, you know, he’s like, mm-hmm I don’t want to eat this, but he tries.

Aislyn: That’s really cool. Well, I’d love to go back to your history, like how did you first fall in love with food?

Christina: Oh man. I think that started as a 10-year-old. Both my parents worked full-time. It was myself, my older sister Daniela, and my little sister Sophia. We would go hang out with my grandmother, my father’s mother, and she lived on the east side of Salinas and she had this awesome house with a huge backyard. But very different than what you would normally expect to see your American household have.

So her backyard looked like a rancho in Mexico. So there was like cactus growing in the corner over here. She had a chicken coop over here, and then the neighbors next door were growing like jalapeños, corn, tomatoes, and they would trade.

So she’d give them eggs and they’d give her fresh produce. And seeing our household and how different we lived, you know, we went to the grocery store to go buy things. So when I would go over to my grandmother’s house she would grab a basket, go outside, cut the prickly pears. Then, you know, dress them in the kitchen with salt and lemon, and we would just eat ’em off the plate like that.

I was just so amazed by the drastic difference, like the connection that she had with food, you know, so being observant of that, as a young child, I was like, wow, this is something completely different. And then just the aroma was so different too. I mean, I would watch her make tortillas on the stove and she would do it, like it was absolutely nothing—like sticking her hand on that hot comal.

Aislyn: Yes.

Christina: Like it was cold and you know, beans bubbling over here and you smell them. And then as soon as she opened that lid to the rice, you’re just like, oh my God. I totally get it. And she would watch me watch her, observe her cooking.

Aislyn: She knew, she clocked that you were into it.

Christina: She knew that I was super into it.

Aislyn: So how did you wind up entering the fine dining world as a chef, and how are you combining that fine dining education with this kind of focus on Indigenous ingredients?

Christina: Yeah. So I mean, I didn’t start off in fine dining. I started off as a Denny’s waitress, and then it moved up the chain from there.

And I ended up landing a server/bartender job at Pebble Beach. And they had sort of like an open kitchen concept. So we had like this beautiful brick oven, like this fire brick oven and they would do pizzas, but like sides along with that. So like duck fat marble potatoes and crispy Brussels sprouts with bacon and beets with like a horseradish crème fraîche sauce.

It was right next to the bar. So I’m just like looking at all this food while I’m making these drinks, like, oh my God, and having that be an opportunity to also try different ingredients. At Pebble Beach, you know, you get the opportunity to try frois, you get the opportunity to try delicious oysters because you’re in the industry and sometimes there’s little snacks left over.

So I was very lucky to be able to try these things at these very upscale restaurants and think in my own mind, like, how would I be able to interpret this into something familiar in my own culture.

And then asking questions in the back of the house. Like, the duck confit, how does that work? How does that process go? What are you rubbing on the duck, the ingredients that you’re using? It’s a sugar rub with herbs.

On days off, I would cook for myself and my boyfriend and Oh yeah. Loved it. Any chance I could, that’s what I was doing. The girl who was running the pizza oven, she finally one day had it with me and was like, Christina, you really just need to start working in the kitchen. She’s like, I’m really tired of your questions. I think you just need to start working in the kitchen. And I looked at her and I’m like, well, who’s going to take me with no experience back of the house? As soon as they see my résumé, they’re like, oh, server/bartender all day. Like, what are you thinking? You get paid less in the kitchen than you do as a bartender. Do you really want to give that up?

So I had to make that decision, you know, do I follow my passion and make it work? Or do I continue serving and bartending and living pretty comfortably with a little extra savings? So asking her that, she’s like, you know what, my boyfriend is actually the executive chef at Post Ranch and he’s looking for a chef apprentice, but he’s looking for somebody with no experience whatsoever and he did not want anybody from culinary school. And I asked her this. I’m like, why would he want somebody like that? And she’s like, because you are there for the passion, the commitment. And then he can mold you into something specific. ’Cause going to culinary school, you’re learning the basics of things, but you’re taught that this is the only way and this is it.

And it almost cuts off your creativity a little bit because you’re so in line like, oh, this is how the French do it and this is how it has to be done.

He was very out of the box. So he used a lot of different crazy ingredients and, you know. I don’t want to say Willy Wonka, but he had that kind of charm to him where I’m like, oh my God, this guy is thinking of certain things that I would never dream of or think of.

And it takes a lot of courage to do things like that. So I got a hold of him. We started talking about it. I had dinner at Post Ranch. I did a stage where you kind of work a little bit in the back of the house and get the feel for service and communication. And I was in love with it. I absolutely loved it. And was like, I want to do this.

And he’s like, okay, it’s $13.50 an hour. You have to drive all the way from Salinas to Post Ranch every day, five days a week. And I was committed. I was like, okay, done deal. Let’s do it. And I left serving and bartending behind and really immersed myself in what they were doing at Post Ranch.

They were doing some really incredible stuff at that time, and I felt really lucky to be there with the certain chefs that were there. There was Elizabeth Maurer who was our chef de cuisine there, Quinn Thompson, who was the sous chef, and of course John Cox, who was the executive chef at Sierra Mar at Post Ranch.

And this team of people were just absolutely incredible and I learned techniques from them so having to keep up with everybody who has experience in the kitchen or did go to culinary school, I’m just like, oh God, what did I really get myself into? But it was incredible.

Aislyn: You had many moments that were both, I’m sure hard and wonderful, but is there one that really sticks with you about either how you learned to think about ingredients and how that inspired what you’re doing now, or even just loving what you’re doing despite the difficulty?

Christina: During that time John had his chef’s tasting menu, which I thought was absolutely incredible. On my station I was responsible for four of those dishes on the tasting menu. They were things that were really true to Big Sur. We did like a seaweed bread that we would curl and you could see these beautiful long strands of seaweed in this rye bread. And it was like a smoked mussel purée with pickled sea grapes. And it sat on this beautiful rock and it was like the ocean brought to you.

Thinking along those lines—the terrain, the sea, and the abundance that is around Big Sur—made me look a little bit deeper. That’s where my foraging started to come into play. ’Cause we were foraging for mushrooms even on the property. There were chanterelles everywhere. You would be lucky and find a couple morels if you knew the spots and porcini mushrooms.

So I’m like, oh my God. You can go to the point where my grandmother permacultured her backyard to what she specifically loves. And then you can go wild and find these things that are seasonal and so true and non–genetically modified. Like these are it.

Being able to taste these ingredients in their true essence. So like the sea grapes, I absolutely loved them because they carried little pockets of sea water in them. And as soon as you bit into them you’d get this beautiful briny bright taste to it. And then the fried sardine we had on top of it, or the smoked mussel— I mean, it was incredible to recognize all of these things.

Even as a kid growing up, we’d go to the beach and I’d see that seaweed there; sardines have such a huge history with the Monterey Bay area. And then finding people who forage for these sea grapes in the water, I was just in awe. It sparked another light in me, like when I was 10 years old watching my grandmother make rice, beans and fresh tortillas. But this was on a whole separate level.

And to see him honoring a lot of the Indigenous ingredients— that was my first place also seeing acorn flour. He had actually found a lady in Martinez, California who was processing acorns and turning them into flour and he would buy it from her and we’d use it at Post Ranch for our caviar setup.

So they were acorn blinis. These cute little pancakes. So that, you know, that stuck true to me because that’s a huge part of my cooking now is using acorns. I now harvest and process my own, which is not an easy thing to do, but I love it. Think of it like when you’re doing tamales and you need that whole group of people to kind of help with that assembly line—acorn processing is like that exact same thing. So yeah, I think just those little hints of detail that he had and that I was exposed to really made me the chef that I am today.

Aislyn: Your business name now is Chieftess Monterey Bay. So tell me how you’re bringing all of these aspects of your life, your ancestors, these various cultures you were raised within to the table quite literally.

Christina: I think it was a concept I had to really think about. I really wanted to know the purpose. Cooking throughout all of these different restaurants—Sierra Mar, Stokes Adobe, Cella restaurant—you get to experience a lot of different things and a lot of different ingredients. But I was like, what’s true to me? What’s true to myself? What can I bring that’s a little bit different to the table?

During COVID, everybody had time to kind of just stay home. I took that opportunity to really dive into my roots and find out my lineage. I’m about five foot nine, five ten, and my parents just always said, oh, we’re Mexican. And I’m like, there’s absolutely no way. I’m way too tall to just be Mexican. Like, there’s more to the story.

Finding my genealogy and discovering my heritage that way and noticing that 55 percent of my genetic makeup was Indigenous, and then down the line was Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and a little bit of Irish—there’s one huge one that made sense. I’m like, okay, we’re Indigenous. That makes a lot more sense than just Mexican. And then looking during COVID too, like, wow, there’s not a lot of Indigenous food anywhere. Not until these recent couple of years have we had, you know, Sean Sherman from Oglala. We have Crystal who’s down in Oakland who’s doing amazing food, and then another chef from Salinas as well who’s now in Arizona. There’s just a handful of us doing this.

It was amazing to me that I could have the potential to be a part of that, to make an impact, especially where I live. So being born and raised in the Monterey Bay area and how much history there is here about the natives, but it’s not really a part of the tourist attractions. A lot of it is the aquarium, the coastline, a lot of Italian food, a lot of Portuguese past and Japanese, but really nothing from the origins, from the people.

So I decided to do more homework on that and found out about the Esselen tribe here in Big Sur and being connected with them. Finding a couple of the members and telling ’em like, you know, I know we’re both native. I’m not of Esselen Tribe, but I’m a chef here in the area and I really want to pay respect and homage to the very beginning of it.

They kind of were taken aback a little bit and were like, wait a minute, you’re trying to do what now? And I’m like, yeah. Wait, hold on. Let me tell you it gets better. Developing a connection with the Esselen tribe and being able to really highlight ingredients that were staples in their diet for their ancestors—

since doing this, a lot of people have been interested in finding out more about the native culture in this area. Like where are some of the spots that they would hunt and gather or where they would process these acorns or anything like that. So being connected with them and being invited onto tribal lands and then seeing certain spots where they would hold ceremony or where they buried their loved ones.

Aislyn: Yeah.

Christina: And then where they process their acorns. It’s like these huge rocks that look like giant metates; there’s like a hole in the middle of it. Those were the grinding stones. So to see where their villages were and how they processed it, I mean, it just made sense to me that this needs to be important, especially in our area. Indigenous food needs a seat at the table.

Aislyn: So how does that play out? Like what are you making and how do people respond?

Christina: So re‑Americanizing American food is how I call it. So taking American classics—think like a burger, bison burger. We’re using miner’s lettuce, and then the bun is acorn flour, then like an elderberry aioli or something along those lines. So it looks very familiar. It’s a burger, but you’re using Indigenous ingredients to make it happen.

That excites people ’cause it’s like, oh my god, it’s a burger, but it’s something completely different. Or pasta. I’ve used acorns for pasta and then did a bison bolognese on it. So honoring both parts of my lineage and then the origin of where I live itself—trying to intertwine all three.

I feel like the Chieftess table has a seat for everybody at that table. It’s healing cultural colonization; it’s healing a lot of ancestral pain and past through food. So bringing the Italian and the native together—tomatoes are an Indigenous ingredient to the Americas, but yet it’s a heavy part of Italian culture.

Chocolate is the same thing. Chocolate is very prevalent in Europe and used everywhere, but those origins belong to Mexico—vanilla, chilies, everything. A lot of people think Indigenous food: okay, they ate venison over the fire and some berries. So being able to put a culinary spin on it and present something absolutely beautiful at the same time is amazing for me to do.

Aislyn: Yeah, so going back to the foraging and the seasonality, it sounds like you’ve built these relationships with the Esselen tribe, and as I understand it, you’re able to forage on some of their land. So how did you expand into this foraging and how has that grown?

Christina: I think as far as the foraging side in this area, I still am learning a lot. Jana Mason; she’s one of the tribal members. We’ve gone out and collected acorns. She’s shared her elderberries with me and just getting a lot of the history from her and then the lay of the land. Just being able to converse with them and tell them like, look, I’m gonna turn this elderberry into elderberry caviar pearls, and then putting them on top of oysters with smoked trout roe. But, um, just learning as well how to respect the foraging—take only what you need and then leave the rest.

I’ve had such great support from the community and a lot of smaller tribes that aren’t federally recognized but are there, really just in awe of what I’m doing and the work that I’m putting into it to showcase Indigenous food. It’s very humbling to be doing this. I think it just feels good that a lot of the Indigenous communities here are supporting what I’m doing, and thus I want to support them as well. So anything that I forage from certain parts—I’m talking about the food—I always give that respect that this was foraged on tribal land from the Esselen or this was foraged in Chumash territory, or this was foraged in the Amah Mutsun territory.

So always giving that thanks, that respect, where it’s needed and deserved. And then just putting my own Willy Wonka on it, I guess.

Aislyn: Well, I feel like the Big Sur Food and Wine Festival would be a great place to talk about that because you had a Chieftess table there and the menu looked amazing. Acorn flour was a big feature. How did that dinner go? How did you develop it? What was the reaction?

Christina: That was something super new for me. This was my first year being invited to do Big Sur Food & Wine. When I talked to Elsa, who’s the food and wine director of Big Sur, she was just like, I really want to do something to honor the land that we’re on and having this festival. Would you be interested in doing a dinner?

I was like, absolutely. It ended up turning into this beautiful story of it being a female chef, all female sommeliers and a female winemaker for the Chieftess table dinner.

What did we call it? Unearthing Our Divine Feminine and how cooking is such a big part not only for men, but for women too, and how healing that is and the intention that you put into food. ’Cause we can constantly replicate food and at some point it just becomes almost robotic. But there’s romance involved, there’s connection, there’s love.

The stories I told behind each dish were very moving for people. The opening ceremony we had before everybody sat down for dinner was very moving.

Aislyn: What did you do? What was the opening ceremony?

Christina: The opening ceremony was with one of the elders from the Esselen tribe. So Carrie kind of did a blessing beforehand, before everybody sat at the table. And then we called in our ancestors. I got to call in my ancestors from both sides of my lineage and just bring the spirits to the table because we also had another table, like an ofrenda, so it was dedicated to the ancestors. And so each course I set out a small plate for the ancestors with candles, and there were San Pascual flowers everywhere. So they could sit and eat during the entire dinner as well.

I had gotten emotional in the beginning of the ceremony, calling out my ancestors because I was just overwhelmed with joy and that oh‑shit moment where you’re like, oh my God, like a year ago I had a baby and now I’m doing Big Sur Food & Wine and I’m a private chef.

I don’t have a brick and mortar to do all this, but I’m here. I’m in this moment. This was something I had dreamed of and now I’m doing it. I put my whole heart out there for this dinner.

Aislyn: That’s beautiful.

Christina: Yeah, so it was an amazing experience being able to tell each dish and what they meant. For instance, the amuse I made was called the Salmon People. For that one the story goes that the salmon gave its life for human and animal to sustain themselves. So it only made sense to me to start with the salmon first.

I took a little bit of what I had learned at Post Ranch and I set the salmon on dulse seaweed chips that Monterey-based seaweed producers are making. They’re an incredible company doing really great regenerative work and taking care of our oceans. It was the seaweed chip with smoked salmon on top, pickled sea grapes, and then edible flakes of gold.

It sat on a river rock. So as they sat at their table, that was the first thing they saw—a rock with this beautiful little bite of food. Then I told the story behind it and where everything was harvested from or foraged from.

That was my story with that first bite of food, and then it went on from each course. The Sacred Buffalo was a bison tartare that we served in a bone marrow with a quail yolk and a bunch of different little foraged items—sunflower shoots, calendula flowers—and it came with an acorn focaccia as the toast.

Aislyn: What does acorn flour taste like? I don’t think I’ve ever tasted it. How would you describe it?

Christina: It’s got its own flavor profile, but the closest thing to it would be a toasted chestnut or really toasted almonds. It has that nutty, buttery flavor to it. And it is gluten‑free on its own, which is amazing. Using it throughout the entire dinner was such a staple, especially because we were dining under redwood and oak trees, so it was outside.

Aislyn: Oh, lovely.

Christina: Being able to enjoy something that normally in Monterey we see acorns at some point during the year all over the ground—people who have dined at the Chieftess table look at it a different way because they’re like, wow, that is actually a food source, not only for animals, but it was a huge staple for the natives. And it’s now coming back again. I’m trying to bring it back a little bit.

Aislyn: Well, you mentioned that you don’t have a public-facing restaurant at this point, but you do seem to do a lot of events where people can engage. How are you thinking about bringing your food to people outside of private chef work? What’s your goal with that?

Christina: I would love a brick‑and‑mortar that people can come to. I have very special ideas for that—it’s not going to be just a normal place you walk up to. But doing events for the community and for colleges. Like this Friday I am doing a dinner at Cabrillo College and then one at UC Santa Cruz.

Aislyn: Oh, cool. What are they about?

Christina: For the native community. Cabrillo College—it’s for Indigenous Month—we’re doing a Three Sisters garden. And Rowen White, another Indigenous person in the community doing amazing work, does seed saving—regenerative seed saving—and how important it is to keep heirloom seeds or just get back into planting things in your own ground if you have it.

We’re going to do a collaborative workshop. She’s going to show people how to save seeds, what they’re for, planting them in what season. I’ll bounce off that with the dinner. Some of these seeds we’re using: pumpkin and squash right now. I’m going to do a pumpkin‑sage soup with acorn fry bread on the side. We’re doing wild rice with a Three Sisters kotash and bison meatballs—almost like a native bowl. And blue‑corn cookies—the blue corn is coming from Fireline Farms here in Salinas.

At UC Santa Cruz we’ll do the same thing— a cooking demo to show people these ingredients I’ve foraged, then let them taste them. Who doesn’t love education and tasting it at the same time?

Aislyn: Are you seeing more interest? It sounds like it based on events—do people engage more or differently?

Christina: A hundred percent. People are starting to establish a relationship with food and are highly aware of mass production of food that’s been happening in America for a long time and how a lot of the nutritional value from those foods has been stripped away or genetically modified. So it looks beautiful in the grocery store but lacks the nutrients it originally had from its wild state.

People are getting more interested in having apple trees or lemon trees or growing peas and pumpkins, and actually knowing they can use them culinarily. Especially in our area, we’re becoming more aware.

Aislyn: Just a few final questions. Are any specific Indigenous experiences you recommend travelers do in Monterey or Big Sur?

Christina: I think the Esselen tribe is trying to make an impact by showing certain sacred parts of Monterey. They’re developing things like an Esselen trail throughout Monterey.

Aislyn: Oh, neat. How cool.

Christina: They’re coming up with a mapped guide to show people like, okay, this specific spot in Pacific Grove is where they collected abalone and harvested them. If you ever walk that trail out on 17‑Mile Drive, you can still see shards of abalone shells everywhere. That was certainly a fishing place.

Even the history of buildings—Cella Bakery and the adobes they’re in have been there a long time. The people who owned them then had servants who were natives from that area. They were colonized, put in the missions and then became servants in households. That isn’t highlighted much because history can be uncomfortable, but it means a lot to Monterey’s history and shows how the Spanish arrived and brought their culture.

One of my favorite places to go is Point Lobos; it has one of the last standing whaling cabins where you can see huge cauldrons where they boiled down fat and whale bones remain. Going out there and walking the trail—I’ve done the whole loop a few times; it’s something beautiful.

I’m looking forward to seeing the guided map from the Esselen tribe and potentially opening their tribal lands. They’re building out a museum with artifacts they’ve found and doing a native garden on their property to tell their story themselves.

I also love to take friends who’ve never been to Esalen Institute. I used to work and live there; the hot springs overlook the ocean right off the cliff. To sit in hot spring water and stare out at sea otters playing or get lost in your thoughts is wonderful.

Aislyn: If it’s your day off and you have a friend in town for the first time—where do you take them, what do you do, what do you eat?

Christina: If I have a day off and I don’t have my son with me, we’d start at Alta Bakery because the garden back there is beautiful and the food is fantastic. I cannot function without coffee—some of the best coffee and matcha lattes I’ve ever had. Then I’d do the trail toward the wharf.

That’s a nostalgic place—see all the restaurants, people calling about seafood, seagulls, and hear the sea lions. I’d definitely go to Ad Astra Bakery. Chef Ron Mendoza is doing amazing pastries and his bread is killer. He opened a second bakery in Carmel Valley. He’s worked at French Laundry and other legendary places but the food speaks for itself. Salmon tartines, giant cinnamon rolls—it’s almost like a kid in a candy store.

If we have kids, I love taking them to Hacienda Hay & Feed. My friend Nile, who owns it, has little train rides for kids and a huge corn pit for them to go nuts in. He also has a little café.

I also love the river in Carmel Valley—a very local spot in summer where families bring huge picnics and kids play in the shallow river. It’s an epic spot many tourists don’t get to.

Carmel Valley Creamery—Sophie is making incredible cheeses I used for Big Sur Food & Wine. I used her fromage blanc mixed with elderberry jam and smoked duck, set on a blue‑corn blini with wild honey and bee pollen.

I used her fromage blanc again in an Indigenous ravioli: we harvested Katy Rose Rice, harvested black sage from Big Sur for me, added porcini from my friend Jonathan in Pacific Grove, sat a duck egg inside it, encased it in acorn pasta, brown butter sage, toasted pine nuts, more mushrooms. It was really great.

Aislyn: It’s dinner time and my mouth is legitimately watering.

Christina: It was great. Taking people to Sophie and tasting her cheeses—she has this little cave of beautiful wheels of cheese.

Aislyn: Yeah.

Christina: It’s fun to see the process. Who doesn’t want to go cheese tasting? I think it’s fantastic. Then hit a few restaurants I love—Stokes Adobe is a favorite; I helped them open it a few years ago. Matt, the lead bartender/bar manager, is doing amazing drinks.

Cella and Stokes Adobe are very close to each other. Josh Perry down the street from Cello is magical with cocktails; they’re practically 500 feet apart so you can do a little bar crawl.

Aislyn: Is there one you’d get or do they change?

Christina: They change seasonally, but Matt at Stokes Adobe had one called the Jade Cove. Jade Cove in Big Sur is where locals hunt and find jade. It’s a bit dangerous—you shimmy down a rope off the cliff and climb back up.

Aislyn: Yes, you have to have that strength to get back up.

Christina: People tie a 12‑pack of beer and drag it down to friends. He has a drink called the Jade Cove that is a beautiful jade color; I think the base is vodka, but I didn’t ask them—I was just like, bring the next one.

Josh at Cella does nostalgic cocktails—one with Fruit Loops that’s clear in the glass with a single Fruit Loop on a big ice cube. He did one with a Strawberry Pop‑Tart—mini Pop‑Tarts on the side of the glass. It’s playful and nostalgic.

Aislyn: Sign me up for Christina’s food crawl. I’m there.

Christina: I would love that. Let’s do it.

Aislyn: Christina, thank you so much for your time tonight. It’s lovely to chat.

Christina: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Aislyn: Thank you so much to Christina Lonewolf Martinez, and to our event partner Visit California. To watch a live recording of the event, see our YouTube link in the show notes (AFAR YouTube) and please see more about Christina, her events, and ways travelers can engage with Monterey’s Indigenous history via the Esselen Tribe site.

Please also check out our first Unpacked Live episode featuring Humboldt County river guide John Acuna and our bonus episode featuring Angela C. Marcellino, a Massachusetts‑based author and member of the Mashpee Wampanoag, who have lived in the state for more than 10,000 years—much longer than Massachusetts has been a state. Angela did our land acknowledgement and has a wonderful cookbook. We’ve included that link as well.

Ready for more interviews with travel writers? Visit Afar.com and be sure to follow us on Instagram and TikTok. We are @AfarMedia. If you enjoyed today’s exploration, please subscribe and rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform—it helps other travelers find it.

This has been Unpacked: Minis, a production of Afar Media. The podcast is produced by Aislyn Green, Nikki Galteland, and Katherine LaGrave. The podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit Airwave Media to listen and subscribe to their other shows like Culture Kids and The Explorers Podcast.